I am loath to admit this on the website of my employer, but this morning I did not “work,” per se, so much as text my colleagues incessantly about various piquant news items: a reporter’s alleged affair with RFK Jr., leaked flirty texts to a Congresswoman, and that North Carolina GOP guy who may have been commenting prolifically on a pornographic website. In conversation with my colleagues, these news items were called “a Russian nesting doll of WTF” and also “sort of dreadful.” Anyway, here’s a roundup of an absolutely banner 24 hours for libidinous politicos. Enjoy.
RFK Jr.
RFK Jr. is having another tough moment—or, possibly, a great one—after news broke of his allegedly inappropriate relationship with New York magazine political reporter Olivia Nuzzi, who wrote a profile of the erstwhile presidential candidate last November. It was not, I should add, a terribly positive bit of coverage; Nuzzi described him as a “Frankencandidate [Trump] helped create” and called a drive they took together “the longest two-mile car ride of my life” due to his minivan being a “death machine” that “smells so bad I thought I might pass out after about 15 seconds.” (The vehicle had apparently been run ragged by his three enormous dogs.)
And yet, according to a statement from Nuzzi, some time after this stinky, madcap encounter, her communication with RFK Jr. “turned personal.” She claims that their relationship was never physical and it did not begin until after her profile ran, but she’s been placed on leave from her job pending an investigation. Washingtonians have lots of questions. Did it affect her coverage of the 2024 presidential race? (NY Mag’s initial review said no.) Did this end her engagement to Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza? (This tweet calls her his “ex-fiancée,” so maybe.) And are brain worms contagious? Did she catch them?
Nancy Mace
Congresswoman Nancy Mace has managed—yet again—to get herself in the news for being hot. After Vanderbilt professor Michael Eric Dyson blasted Mace on CNN for showing “disregard for the humanity of Black people” by repeatedly mispronouncing “Kamala,” Mace struck back with what appears to be a screenshot of a flirty text exchange. After the CNN panel, Mace claims to have sent Dyson a picture of the two of them together; he apparently replied “Shhh don’t tell anybody. We look good together!” followed by a kissy-face emoji. (Responding on X, Dyson wrote, “her white women’s tears and mendacity are all in the service of lies and distortions.”) This is a great news story for Mace. Not only does she make a critic look like a hypocrite, but she’s now placed into the Congressional record a photograph of herself in a pink, figure-hugging dress—one in which even Michael Eric Dyson admits she looks gorgeous.
Mark Robinson
Yesterday, CNN dropped a bombshell story about posts allegedly made by Mark Robinson, who’s running for North Carolina governor, on a porno website called “Nude Africa.” Robinson—a Black Republican whom Trump has approvingly called “Martin Luther King on steroids”—allegedly referred to himself as a “black NAZI!” who supports reinstating slavery. (Robinson denies having said this or any of the other comments attributed to the profile.) CNN’s review of the “Nude Africa” posts also turned up comments professing a love of transgender porn (despite Robinson’s vocal opposition to trans rights) and a series of remarks that the outlet described as so “gratuitously sexual and lewd in nature” that they were not fit to print. Also, just for fun, in the portion of the CNN story devoted to explaining how reporters identified the “Nude Africa” profile, one piece of evidence was his frequent use of the phrase “I don’t give a frog’s fat ass.”